To: King County Citizens Election Oversight Committee
From: Lucy Gaskill-Gaddis, Chair, Education Committee LWVS
Date: May 13, 2007
My name is Lucy Gaskill-Gaddis representing the League of Women Voters of King County South and Seattle. We appreciate the opportunity to comment on King County's proposal to buy new ballot tabulation equipment in preparing for King County moving to a mostly voting by mail system.
A major principle of the League of Women Voters is that every citizen should be protected in the right to vote. Voting procedures should serve the voter with the maximum of convenience, simplicity, and efficiency while ensuring that the requirement of secrecy, accuracy and impartiality are maintained. The choice of election equipment is critical to carrying out these requirements.
The League of Women Voters also supports election equipment that has the ability to verify its accuracy by providing independent voter verifiable ballots that can be recounted when a recount is needed. The equipment should be able to do automatic, mandatory audits of elections results of randomly selected precincts.
We hope that you will consider all these criteria inreviewing the King County Executive's proposal.